Thoughts on life, work, and pursuits

Memos

“The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails.”

John Maxwell

This Month’s Focus: Every day we are exposed to fresh ideas, challenged to rethink our views on previously settled issues, and presented with opportunities for new growth. We can choose to shun those that don’t immediately resonate with our conventions or we can mull them over non judgmentally. In the former scenario, we don’t grow. In the latter, we grow and sometimes discover something intriguing that we decide fits and works for us (that we may never have imagined in a million years). What are you currently rejecting?

Monthly Perspective: “The things that will destroy America are prosperity at any price, peace at any price, safety first instead of duty first, the love of soft living, and the get rich quick theory of life.” – Theodore Roosevelt

I.T. Leadership Tip: Making technology work/Making it work for the business; Different skill sets. Few technologists possess both. Figure out your area of strength.

“One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.”

Bertrand Russell

This Month’s Focus: Limited resources are a factor for everyone. It’s what you do with what you’ve got that ultimately decides whether you’ll get more. Complaining is unlikely to move you forward. You may not love the results that you get from your very limited resources, but if you can’t demonstrate that you used those resources wisely, how can you expect others to trust you to efficiently and effectively use even greater resources?

Monthly Perspective: “The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.” –Sir William Bragg (British physicist 1862 – 1942)

I.T. Leadership Tip: IT departments who “charge” — allocate costs by user or department — are not reactionary, simply honest. Expect setup, maintenance, & usage fees. The real problem is that most IT departments don’t have their work organized well enough to grasp true resource needs, manage expectations realistically, and make effective priority decisions internally…let alone to move money in from elsewhere.

By the way, there is no “silver bullet.” Focus on what moves you forward rapidly, within current parameters, & which can be tweaked as needed.

This Month’s Focus: All too often, when we are mapping out improvement, we place too much emphasis on “best” when “better” is often the only way to move from talk to action. When we repeatedly aim for bettering ourselves, and we integrate what we learn along the way, we not only create continuous improvement, but also elevate things beyond what we may have ever envisioned as “best.”

Monthly Perspective: “Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal.” – Nietzsche

I.T. Leadership Tip: Maintenance windows are a fact of life in IT. Some organizations “wing it.” Others script every detail. Which do you think gets better results?

An interesting statistic: After six years of independence, 100% of my consulting engagements come to me through people I’ve worked with before. It’s always an honor to work on a new project for an old client (or colleague) or to receive a referral from an existing relationship.

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